Online bookies ask WTO for rescue from 'Armageddon'

As their shares continued to plummet and financial problems worsened, online gaming and sports betting companies were yesterday trying to calculate what remained of their business models in the face of what one chief executive called the "Armageddon scenario" brought about by the US outlawing internet gambling.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, passed by the US Senate on Friday and due to be signed into law by President Bush within two weeks, makes it illegal for banks and credit card companies to process online gaming payments in the US.

PartyGaming, the biggest online gaming company, said yesterday that it was cancelling its first ever dividend. Its shares fell by another 9% after a 58% fall on Monday, closing at 41p. World Gaming said it was now in technical default of its loan conditions, sending its shares down 2.75p to 16.5p.

Two other leading British online gaming companies held out the hope that the World Trade Organisation could come to their rescue and overrule the legislation that wiped an estimated £4bn from the sector's value on Monday. Sportingbet and 888 said they were looking into whether the new US legislation contravened commitments the US has made to the WTO. After a complaint from Antigua, the WTO last year ruled that US laws on internet gambling were in breach of its rules.

Whereas PartyGaming and 888 have already announced they will suspend all business in the US, Sportingbet hinted yesterday it was considering continuing operating in the US using offshore banks to make transactions, even though it could lead to executives not just being arrested in the US but also being extradited from the UK.

"It may or may not be in the wider interest of our shareholders to run the risk that that might happen," Sportingbet's chief executive, Nigel Payne, told Radio 4's Today programme.

Sportingbet, which makes 70% of its revenue from the US, was until last week confident that online gambling would continue to remain a grey area in the US - at least until President Bush left office - and was taken by surprise by the legislation. Its new chairman, Andy McIver, said last month that online gambling companies no longer had viable businesses without customers in the US.

Gambling companies say the effect of the legislation would be to drive internet gambling underground. "Wherever there is demand there is supply," said Gigi Levy, the next 888 chief executive. "There are 10 million Americans that play online and they're not going to go away."

Mr Payne said the UK government and the EU had so far been "disappointingly silent". "I know that they know it's protectionism, and I would hope that they would step up to the plate, but I do not know whether they will be doing so."

A spokesman for the DTI said: "We are happy to listen to the concerns that online gambling companies have."